“The real story of machine learning is not how it promotes home bomb-making, but that it’s being deployed at scale with minimal ethical oversight, in the service of a business model that relies entirely on psychological manipulation and mass surveillance. The capacity to manipulate people at scale is being sold to the highest bidder, and has infected every aspect of civic life, including democratic elections and journalism.”
“Frankly, as long as we continue to view the planet as an endless “resource,” as long as we uphold the rights of individuals and corporations to amass infinite wealth while others go hungry, as long as we continue to believe that governments do not have the responsibility to feed, clothe, house, and educate everyone—all our talk is mere posturing. Why do these simple things scare people so much? It is just common decency. Let’s face it: the free market is not free, and it doesn’t give a shit about justice or equality.”

“And now we have the era of Trump, in which we learn that intelligence and nuance are relative terms. And that W, when compared to Trump, was a serious intellectual. Now U.S. foreign policy is tweeted to the world on an hourly basis. You can’t get more transparent than that. The Absurd Apocalypse. Who would have imagined that could be possible? But it is possible—more than possible—and it will be quicker in the coming if Trump makes the dreadful mistake of attacking Iran.”

“One of those leading that charge is Rashida Tlaib, the new representative from Michigan’s 13th district and one of the two first Muslim women to serve in the House of Representatives – and she is wasting no time in making her voice heard. “We’re gonna go in there,” she said, speaking to the progressive organising group MoveOn just hours after she was sworn in, “and we’re going to impeach the motherfucker.”

This caused the predictable backlash of pearl-clutching from Republican circles, whose faux-outrage at the swear-word would, perhaps, have had more moral weight if they had not spent the previous three years justifying their support for a president who boasted of “grabbing” women “by the pussy,” and attacking Democrats for their “political correctness”.”

Photo of the Snowy Convict Lake Reflections taken by Ms. Jen on 01.08.19 with her Nikon D850 and a Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens in Mono County, California.

Thurs. 11.01.18 – To a person who is not yet on East Coast Daylight time, but instead still three hours behind in Pacific Daylight time, waking up at 6:40am in Rhode Island to be out at Mackerel Cove beach to photograph the sunrise and dogs running free at low tide was a bit of a difficult thing to do – though it was well worth it.

The air was cold, 30-something degrees fahrenheit – hat, gloves, and a jacket were needed. The sun rose slowly, with the first pink light reflections on the wet low tide line at 6:50am. For the next twenty or so minutes, Sparky the black lab ran happily after her ball while Kenji the island dog poked along the high tide kelp piles for edibles, as the clouds lying low in packed cotton ball formation in the eastern sky turned from gray to pink to neon pink-orange-yellow to the sun rising over the trees and houses on the east side of the cove. From 6:50am to 7:18am, it was magical.

Sat. 10.20.18 – Once again the pygmy nuthatches returned to the water faucet today and I was prepared with my Nikon D850 and a 300mm f/4 lens. I was further prepared by optimizing the fn button on the front of the D850 to switch image size between FX and DX crop so that I would get more reach to take a nice photo(s) of any birds at the water faucet.

Thurs. 10.18.18 – I have fallen in love with my Nikon 300mm f/4 prime lens that I recently obtained, it truly is a delight of a long reach lens. The photos it takes are clear, the lens is light and easy to hand hold on my Nikon D850 camera.

I was twenty plus feet away from this Yellow-pine Chipmunk and I still got a good set of photos, albeit a bit de-saturated, with this lens through a heavily tinted dusty window.

Double click on the photos to see them in a gallery, and then click on the icon in the top right to see them at full resolution.

Tues. 08.28.18 – Photo above is from my Nikon D850’s memory card from early April in Kensington Gardens. I used Snapbridge to transfer the photo via wifi to my phone, did a wee bit of editing on the phone, and am now posting it to this blog.

Currently Snapbridge only sees the first 20 photos on the card. Right now I have hundreds of photos on the card between April and August of 2018. I need to figure out how to see all the photos on the camer’s card and transfer the ones I want, aka the new bird photos I took today.

Sun. 08.26.18 – One week and one day ago, Miss Sweet Pea, the small dog formerly known as Cindy Lou Who, joined Casa de Mobile Hanen as the Dog in Residence.

So far, so very delightful. Miss Pea is approximately 8 or so years old (6-8 according to Dr. Kali), in her previous life before rescue she lived outside in a backyard somewhere in SoCal. She now lives inside with multiple walks a day.

Just yesterday she realized that chipmunks were prey and got SUPER EXCITED at every chipmunk movement, smell, and burrow. Walks are extra more anticipated now…